JOSIP BULJEVIC The head of the SOA Central Intelligence Agency (second from the left) with President Mesic's advisor Sasa Perkovic, Chief State Attorney Mladen Bajic and the head of the European Commission's delegation to Croatia, Vincent Degert After the recent dismissals, in the wake of the brutal murder of Ivana Hodak, of Ana Lovrin, Berislav Roncevic and Marijana Benko from the posts of justice minister, interior minister and head of the police department respectively, the spotlight of public interest has now, unexpectedly, fallen on Josip Buljevic, who on 10 October became the new director of the SOA Central Intelligence Agency. Buljevic was until then a relatively unknown SOA official at the post of the SOA assistant director for operations. After his boss Tomislav Karamarko was moved to the post of interior minister, Buljevic succeeded him at the post.

The appointment of Josip Buljevic to the post of SOA director was well received in political circles. Buljevic is considered to be the logical choice for the post as he has a long career in the intelligence community, and worked very well with Karamarko, which should improve the communication between the SOA and the police in the future. Asked by reporters when he would give a more detailed presentation of Buljevic, Prime Minister Sanader said he would do so after his official appointment. But President Stjepan Mesic has, for his part, said that that should not be done, because details concerning top intelligence community officials are, as a rule, in other countries made public only after they leave their posts and take on new jobs.

Josip Buljevic was born in Split in 1971. He completed primary and secondary school there. In 1989 he enrolled journalism at the Faculty of Political Science. He studied for five years and received his diploma in 1994. During his university studies Josip Buljevic worked part time at the Vecernji list daily. He wrote articles on culture events – reporting on plays and movies. He has also written reviews in several books. With the breakout of the Homeland War, also during his university years, Buljevic was drafted in Split, and so became a reserve member of the military police. Working as a reserve military police officer Josip Buljevic had already by the early 1990's established his first contacts with the intelligence community. After that he had few doubts. Immediately upon graduating journalism he took employment in the Split branch of what was then the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order (SZUP).

JOHN RAMSDEN, until recently the British ambassador to Croatia

He began working there as an operative, and gradually worked his way up to the head of the Split office of the SZUP. He worked in Split up to 2004. Then he moved to Zagreb. He became the chief of the counter-intelligence department with the POA (Counter-intelligence Agency). He advanced thanks to the indirect recommendation of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader. But Buljevic has no formal ties with the HDZ party. Not long after moving to Zagreb Buljevic continued his upward mobility. In late 2004 he became the head of the operations department within the POA. He personally led and oversaw all operations then led by the POA. Tomislav Karamarko proposed Buljevic for the post of head of operations at the POA.

Among other things Josip Buljevic led the operation to locate and arrest General Ante Gotovina, Hrvoje Petrac and Ico Matekovic. They were all at some point in time fugitives, who avoided facing the courts, and all three were in the end successfully arrested. At the time when Croatia was searching for the fugitive General Ante Gotovina, Buljevic took part in another operation of which he is exceedingly proud. He personally led the operation that led to the resolution of the bombing affair at the British embassy in Zagreb of 19 September 2005. The carelessness of Damir Rovisan, up to then an employee of the British embassy, caused the explosion of a bomb, which initially provoked a great scandal. Not long after the explosion there was an attempt to credit it to the alleged protectors of the then still fugitive General Ante Gotovina. The agents of the British MI6 secret service in Croatia were especially convinced of this kind of scenario. But the opposite was show to be true, that there was no organised group of people behind the act, just an irresponsible individual, who had nothing at all to do with the Gotovina case. This was discovered by Croatian intelligence agents, and the operation was spearheaded by Josip Buljevic, at the time the chief of operations at the POA. To this day the public is unaware that the POA succeeded during the operation in reconstructing the network of British spy collaborators inside some Croatian institutions. After they were exposed all of these people were quietly dismissed from the posts they occupied and are now entirely marginalised.

Buljevic saw the epilogue to the operation as a great personal satisfaction, as he himself often was at odds with agents of the British MI6 during Operation Adria, the aim of which was to locate and arrest then fugitive General Ante Gotovina. Buljevic was bothered by the manipulation in Ante Gotovina case and did his best to thwart them whenever he could. But it could not be parried effectively until the arrest of Ante Gotovina. Little has been written of the recognition due to the Croatian intelligence community in standing up to British spies in Croatia and Buljevic, as the chief operative responsible for it, has not been mentioned at all. The fact that there were no write-ups on the subject certainly boosted his career. Partly because it is never good for spies that someone writes about them, even in a positive light, and partly because he would then likely have come under fire from those newspapers that compromised the careers and labelled anyone who pointed to the manipulation surrounding the Ante Gotovina case as his protectors.

THE BRITISH EMBASSY on Zagreb's Ivan Lucic street, where an employee triggered a bomb three years ago

Today Buljevic does not hide the pride he feels in the role he played in those turbulent times, and the political circumstances have changed to such an extent that he took no issue to that fact that he was promoted a few days ago to the post of SOA director. Buljevic took part in merging the Intelligence Agency (OA) and the Counter-Intelligence Agency (POA), and stayed on as head of operations at the SOA after their merger. Under Buljevic's leadership the SOA should definitely be transformed into a classic intelligence service modelled after similar services in the countries of developed western democracy. Buljevic will direct the activities of the SOA above all to the war on international organised crime, and on the preventive war on terrorism in the region, above all in fighting radical Islamists, Wahabists, who are present in large numbers in Bosnia & Herzegovina. In the future the SOA will focus in particular on industrial espionage – gathering key information on various continents for which it is judged that they could help the Croatian economy. Buljevic intends to continue the process of introducing a new generation of personnel to the SOA. That means that he will gradually send many spies into retirement, who are to be replaced by younger people. Buljevic is opposed to drastic measures in this regard, as he is aware on the basis of his own experience that an operative requires, as a rule, a full five years to get a handle on things. And along with all this Buljevic hopes that the SOA will be able to help in improving the security situation in the country. The SOA has already submitted to the police good intelligence on the background of the attack on businessman Josip Galinac and journalist Dusan Miljusa, which indirectly indicate that the backdrop to these attacks could be linked to organised crime. Buljevic has already earlier cooperated well with Chief State Attorney Mladen Bajic and USKOK director Dinko Cvitan. All of this, and above all his age and the fact that he is considered an expert and not political cadre, should guarantee him a long haul at the post he recently and unexpectedly took over.